No Man’s Sky pushed back to AugustDirector receives death threats in backlash

One of the most anticipated games coming this year, No Man’s Sky, has been pushed back to August. This announcement was met with animosity from the community, including death threats being directed towards the game’s managing director, Sean Murray.

The news was broadcast via Playstation’s website and the official blog on May 27. “As we approached our final deadlines,” Murray said, “we realized that some key moments needed extra polish to bring them up to our standards. I have had to make the tough choice to delay the game for a few weeks to allow us to deliver something special.”

Even the announcement of a one month delay was enough to rile some into a frenzy, as if the village was off to hunt Frankenstein’s monster. Not only did Sean Murray receive death threats, Jason Schreier of Kotaku also received numerous threats upon himself and his family for reporting on the rumor of the delay before the official announcement. The No Man’s Sky subreddit banned those who did so on their forum and gave an official response to what they described as a “debacle”.

I have received loads of death threats this week, but don't worry, Hello Games now looks like the house from Home Alone #pillowfort

While the internet is rife with outrages, like Brianna Wu receiving similar death threats in 2014, it seems that the attention is now focused on No Man’s Sky and its seven week delay. Baseless threats from easily-offended internet trolls aside, the small studio that is Hello Games has been working to perfect the expansive epic.

We're happy with progress, but we need this time to make the game you guys deserveWe couldn't be working harder than we are right now

Initially announced in 2013, No Man’s Sky was showcased at E3 in 2014 as an exclusive for PS4 and now will also be available on PC. In it, players will explore the in game universe and discover alien species, trade goods, have epic space battles, even just relax and fly through the cosmos. As the official Playstation webpage states, the game has “over 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 (18 quintillion) possible planets.”

The official street date for No Man’s Sky has been set at August 9, a mere seven weeks from it’s previous date of June 21. The game is available for pre-order on PS4 through Playstation’s website and on PC on Steam with a $149.99 “Explorer’s Edition” available on iam8bit.

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Adam Houck

When not fearing the inevitable rise of Skynet and the machines, Adam Houck is the Managing Editor for CommonGeek. He formerly wrote for the Live Wire Newspaper in his hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, graduating college with a degree in Humanities and the Language Arts. Don't trust your toaster...